A dream come true
Scott McLaughlin is the Supercars champion, finishing second in yesterday’s race at the Newcastle 500, behind David Reynolds.
His rival for the title, Shane van Gisbergen finished fourth and what looked to be an epic final race of the season turned out to be a bit of a fizzer.
McLaughlin becomes the fourth New Zealander to win this category, joining Jim Richards, Robbie Francevic and van Gisbergen and after coming so close last year, there was a huge sense of relief from McLaughlin to finally realise his dream.
The real drama came early in the day when it was announced van Gisbergen had been given a 25-second penalty for a pit lane refuelling incident in Saturday’s race, with the car still taking on fuel while it was being dropped to the ground.
It meant van Gisbergen was stripped of his win and relegated to fifth, while McLaughlin was promoted to being the race winner. Instead of being two points behind McLaughlin, he was now 53 in deficit and a top six finish would guarantee McLaughlin the title.
A fired up van Gisbergen was furious with receiving the penalty.
‘‘The bloody series took it away from us, that’s s..t,’’ said van Gisbergen after qualifying.
‘‘Anyway, looking forward to a good race and hopefully we can put on a good show and battle for the win. ‘‘
Given McLaughlin had failed to finish in the top six just once in the last 22 races, it was looking good for the 25-year-old Kiwi.
But he was in a better position 12 months ago, only needing to finish in the top 11 and blew it.
As it played out, the penalty didn’t have any impact on the title battle as van Gisbergen had to finish ahead of McLaughlin.
Reynolds led from pole position after the first lap, while van Gisbergen made his intentions clear by overtaking Garth Tander to move to second, just behind McLaughlin. The race settled down quickly, with McLaughlin knowing he didn’t have to overtake Reynolds.
But the feud between Fabian Coulthard and Jamie Whincup continued. On Saturday Whincup ended up in the tyre wall after trying to overtake the New Zealander, then yesterday Whincup spun Coulthard around, ripping the rear spoiler off his Ford.
The safety car came out so everyone dived into the pits and McLaughlin came out in the lead, with Reynolds second and van Gisbergen fifth.
With 48 laps to go, van Gisbergen came in for fuel, having struggled to get past James Courtney for the past 20 laps. Van Gisbergen did manage to get ahead of Courtney through pitstop strategy and once all the last pitstops were done, the order was McLaughlin, Reynolds, Whincup, van Gisbergen.
With 21 laps to go, the inner guards of van Gisbergen’s car started to come away, but he was able to carry on.
The only point of interest left was whether Reynolds would overtake McLaughlin for the win, and with five laps to go McLaughlin let him pass.
Earlier in the day, Chris Pither won the final race of the Super2 development series to claim the title, completing New Zealand’s domination of Australia’s leading motor racing categories.